German publishers are not just fighting Google. They are fighting the link and thus the essence of the internet.

Half the major publishers in Germany have started a process of arbitration — which, no doubt, will lead to suits — to demand that Google pay them for quoting from and thus linking to their content. And now we know how much they think they deserve: 11% of Google’s revenue related to their snippets. From their government filing, they want a cut of “gross sales, including foreign sales” that come “directly and indirectly from making excerpts from online newspapers and magazines public.” [All these links are in German.]

Their demands are as absurd as they are cynical and dangerous. First, of course, Google is sending the publishers plenty of value as well. That is, Google is sending the publishers us: readers, customers, the public these news organizations allegedly want to serve. So what are we, chopped liver? I’ll be posting an essay soon that argues that one reason media have a problem building new digital business models is that we still think value is intrinsic only in content; we have no marketplace and metrics for valuing the creation of an audience for it (now that those functions are unbundled). If the publishers really want a fair exchange of value, then they should also be paying Google for the links — the readers — it sends their way. But, of course, that would create a moral hazard and corrupt search; that Google does not charge for placement in search and Google News is precisely what set it apart from predecessors and built a valuable and trusted service.

Google is never going to pay for the right to quote and link to content. That would ruin not only its business but also the infrastructure of knowledge online. If we can find only the knowledge that pays to be found, then the net turns into … oh, I don’t know, a newsstand?

The publishers aren’t stupid. They realize these facts. That’s what makes their action so cynical. They are trying to blackmail net companies in hopes of getting some payoff from them. They’re not just going after Google but also Microsoft and Yahoo — though, interestingly, if a company has only a search engine, the publishers would charge them only a third of their tariff. That is to say, they want to go after the big net companies because they are big targets.

Earlier this month, I spoke at a Google Big Tent event in Berlin (Google paid my travel expenses; I do not accept other payment from Google) where a conservative member of parliament, Dorothee Bär, had the admirable guts to criticize these mostly conservative publishers for their efforts, telling them that she opposed passage of the law that is allowing this nonsense — a Leistungschutzrecht or ancillary copyright — and also warning them that a failing business model is no excuse to run to government begging for regulation. You’d think conservatives would agree about that. But that, again, is what makes the publishers’ campaign so cynical.

Note, by the way, that Google does not place advertising on Google News. Are the publishers seeking 11% of 0? Note as well that there is data to say that longer samples of content could end up sending *more* traffic to creators (more on that, too, in a later post). These are facts that will need to be discussed in any suits.

Add all this to other attacks on Google by German media and politics against Google: the Verpixelungsrecht — right to be pixelated — in Google Street View and calls by German politicians to break up Google. Add to that as well the recent European court decision upholding a right to be forgotten and requiring Google to take down links to content that subjects don’t like.

And I worry about the net. I worry about Europe and especially Germany about their efforts to protect the past. I’ll likely write more about that as well later.

But, of course, these warriors do not speak for all of Germany or all of Europe. The instigators of the war include Axel Springer, Burda, WAZ, the Müncher Merkur, and others. But other major publishers — Spiegel Online, Handelsblatt.com, FAZ.net, Stern.de, Sueddeutsche.de and [cough] the new German edition of Huffington Post — have not joined the war. And there are politicians such as Bär and outgoing vice president of the European Commission Neelie Kroes who have the courage to defend the future. Here is Kroes the other day responding to strikes across Europe protesting the arrival of Über:

The debate about taxi apps is really a debate about the wider sharing economy. That debate forces us to think about the disruptive effects of digital technology and the need for entrepreneurs in our society. . . .

Whether it is about cabs, accommodation, music, flights, the news or whatever. The fact is that digital technology is changing many aspects of our lives. We cannot address these challenges by ignoring them, by going on strike, or by trying to ban these innovations out of existence. . . .

I believe it is a fundamental truth that Europe needs more entrepreneurs: people who will shake and wake us and create jobs and growth in the process.

We also need services that are designed around consumers. The old way of creating services and regulations around producers doesn’t work anymore. They must have a voice, but if you design systems around producers it means more rules and laws (that people say they don’t want) and those laws become quickly out of date, and privilege the groups that were the best political lobbyists when the law was written.

That is old-fashioned compared to a system that helps all of us as consumers, and encourages entrepreneurs. We need both those elements in our economy; otherwise we will be outpaced to our East and our West. We’ll be known as the place that used to be the future, but instead has become the world’s tourism playground and nursing home. I don’t want Europe to have that future. . . .

More generally, the job of the law is not to lie to you and tell you that everything will always be comfortable or that tomorrow will be the same as today. It won’t. Not only that, it will be worse for you and your children if we pretend we don’t have to change. If we don’t think together about how to benefit from these changes and these new technologies, we will all suffer. . . .

Why is there not a policy from Google to allow media outlets that don’t like their headlines skimmed to be “forgotten”? I think this would allow parity in that those that want to receive traffic from users seeing their headlines in Google would be able to receive that traffic and those that don’t want their headlines seen could request that Google not show their headlines. This could all be worked out without govt or legal intervention and it creates a quid pro quo between the media outlets and Google.

Sadly it seems that even this might fail simply because the ones not wanting to be skimmed would complain that Google is no longer providing access to their content, (which of course would be false), and that the mean business is strangling them out of business. It is strange how the Communist mentality can be so pervasive in a corporate entity.

Eric Hydrick

I think a simple robots.txt file could do just that. The fact of the matter is, they want the traffic from Google (it’s page views which means ad revenue), but they want Google to pay them as well. They’re essentially trying to force payment at both ends, similar to ISPs here in the states (just look at Comcast/Verizon and Netflix), but don’t have nearly the leverage that they think they do.

If it weren’t for the huge warrantless wiretapping scandals in the US, I’d wonder how far things would have to get pushed in Europe before Google just shuts down their European offices and servers and does everything in the US (although their response to the right to be forgotten ruling is brilliant). Sadly, that’s not really a feasible option for them these days…

Just some guy…

Block or remove pages using a robots.txt :filehttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?hl=en

http://myindigolives.wordpress.com/ Ellie K

If G00G were to do what you describe, shut down their European offices, do everything the US, they would no longer be able to shelter those billions of dollars of untaxed profits as they do now. You’re correct: That would be prohibitively expensive!

Eric Hydrick

Google pays European taxes on its European money. And if the punitive taxes for bringing their money back into the US are too much, I suppose there’s always the Caymans.

http://myindigolives.wordpress.com/ Ellie K

The funds kept in Europe are earned in the US.
You are correct, re Caymans, and a variety of other offshore tax havens. I forgot about that.

Torrey

There is such a policy, and it has been in place for years. Any news publisher (or any website operator) who wants to be ignored in Google News (or completely by Google) simply needs to put the appropriate robots.txt or headers in place. These publishers don’t want to do that because (of course) being in Google News brings them traffic and revenue. They just want more money. Totally cynical.

I don’t see where “search” is protected in the constitution of Germany or America.

If I want to use prior art to make my new art as an artist I can not and that is for an artistic purpose.
Google Inc. is a for-profit entity and deserves no special privileges. They have enough money to ensure they do not display copyrighted material if they do not want to pay for it. It would probably take two engineers 45 days to figure it out how to do this.

Jeff seems to mix up the internet and Google inc, the internet alone should be protected, not Google Inc.

As a professor of journalism, I would hope Jeff Jarvis would disclose any economic involvement he has with Google Inc. since he is consistently defending them.
“Earlier this month, I spoke at a Google Big Tent event”

Skythe

Richardya,

what does “search” have to do with anything? Google is linking to their content, just like it’s linking to your Twitter account or Jeff’s blog. Why would Google have to pay Jeff or you or me even if they display ads alongside those links?

Google being profit or non-profit doesn’t have to do anything with this either. You say they don’t deserve “special privileges”. Noone says they do. But what those newspaper guys demand is the opposite: please treat Google worse than anyone else because they’re making money on the internet and we aren’t!

Without the traffic by Google, most likely any newspaper site in the world would go down the drain within months. Proof? The people operating them refuse to opt-out of Google.

Opt-out? Oh, yeah, everyone and his mother has been telling them for years that a simple text file on their servers will make Google ignore their sites. They chose not to use it. Why? Because they know they need search engines. They just want the hand that feeds them to even pay them money.

Absurd.

http://buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis

Richardya,
I have consistently revealed just that: I have spoken at Google events and can’t lose money doing so and so I have them pay my travel expenses. I have not accepted any payment for services from Google. Clear enough?

This wording is bad,
“I worry about Europe and especially Germany about their efforts to protect the past. I’ll likely write more about that as well later. But, of course, these warriors do not speak for all of Germany or all of Europe. The instigators of the war include Axel Springer, Burda, WAZ, the Müncher Merkur, and others. But other major publishers — Spiegel Online, Handelsblatt.com, FAZ.net, Stern.de, Sueddeutsche.de and [cough]…”
Do not invoke phrases like “forgetting the past” and German instigators of war in the context of Google profit making. Sueddeutsche.de is not the Sudetenland, but in combination, it is disturbingly evocative.

The root of this legal battle dates back to the 2009 Hamburg Declaration.

The issue is not about being listed or even linking, rather about copyright protection and being compensated for the reproduction of original, protected works.

How would you feel if I posted chapters from your books on my site and sold ads against it?

Look. You can’t play an artist’s music on TV or in films without paying sync fees, so this concept of drawing the line between fair use and sync rights (a form of royalties) is not foreign, except to USA tech companies. Fair use is allowed if you are using it for criticism or commentary. Google provide neither, just a link.

German copyright law is very different from American copyright law in significant ways.

The Döpfner fight may look like it is pointed at Google, but it is probably aimed more squarely at the aggregators like HUffPO.

Stefan L.

The background of the 2009 Hamburg Declaration was that Google News doesn’t violate German copyright law and that there was no legal means to force Google to pay for snippets. Already in 2003 In the so called ‘Paperboy’ decision the Federal Court of Justice decided that it is legal to set deep links to online newspaper articles and to use snippets to illustrate these links.

Therefore with the 2009 Hamburg declaration German newspaper publishers started lobbying for a new auxiliary copyright (‘Leistungsschutzrecht’) in order to have a legal means to get money from Google for listing their articles on Google News.

Since this new auxiliary copyright became effective newspapers have to opt-in for Google News. Some publishers who have opted in now have started a legal process to demand money from Google. IMHO, a rather weird behavior.

r3verend

Its also called “Lex Google” in Germany. Of Course Google provides the links – thats what search engines do. How would you navigate through the internet without search engines?
What does providing the links has to do with violation of “fair use” in your oppinion? Does a hotel get money from a taxi driver because he brought a customer to the hotel? After all, if the customer didn’t want to go to the hotel he wouldn’t have used the taxi. Copyright infringment isn’t the problem of Google as they do a lot to cooperate with content providers to protect their property with things like “Content ID” or the DMCA Takedown Interfaces.

This is just a symptom of a far bigger and real problem. And that is, that the internet does not honor authorship and everyone is nowadays trying to make money by collecting, transforming and re-publishing content made by others, without adding any value of significance (or at all) to it.

The problem is, that in the process that original author (who put in lot of work and research into creating the original content) does not get acknowledged financially, but all the copier/scraper/aggregator entities (which either do not require any manual labor, because they’re built on automation – also preferably written by others, see open source software -, or require only minimal work, like operating copy&paste) are making tons of money, outrank the original source in the search engines, etc.

Google is epitome of this attitude: the company is practically doing nothing else in all its services, than taking content created by others and displaying it (or parts of it) with some ads slapped onto them, that either make money them directly, or drive traffic to their own services. That’s how their search engine works, that’s how YouTube works, that’s how Google+ works, and that’s how Google News works, amongst others.

That’s why they make billions in profit each year: they do hardly any real work, but they rake in the majority (if not all) of the profits made through the content. Meanwhile the original authors are “starving”, because even if people are actively looking for it, they can hardly find them (the original source).

So the problem is real and needs to be addressed somehow. Now, that said, I’m not sure the method proposed by the German news outlets is the way to go. But either this perpetual or endless re-publication of works (even if partial) has to stop and cease, or the original authors need to be somehow rewarded for their work, every time those get re-published, by any forms and means. Otherwise the web will come to a halt.

There are already magnitudes more copied than original content on the web and it’s already economically unfeasible to create any serious content specifically for the textual web, because of the reasons explained above. And if these issues do not get addressed properly, the web will turn more and more into a useless heap of copycat pages, where everything is a copy of something else, and where you practically won’t be able to find any actual new content, because everything is nothing more than some re-crunched, re-worked, re-aggregated content on what has been on the web for a long time.

http://myindigolives.wordpress.com/ Ellie K

Yes. I realize this, and you realize this. No one in U.S. journalism, computing academia or Web 2.0 companies want to acknowledge it though! At least, no one that I know… They say, like a mantra, “abundance!” and “post-scarcity”. The answer to having one’s original work taken without compensation is always “needed to pivot”, “didn’t innovate” or “failed to find a business model”.

The consequences of perpetuating the status quo follow, quite logically. The web will turn into a useless heap of copycat pages where one cannot find anything, exactly as you described.

r3verend

The last time I used a computer, not Google was displaying the webpages but my browser. And not Google is slapping the ads on the pages but the creator of the webpages (hint – not Google).
If I find your telefonnumber in my phone book I also call you with a telephone – not with the phone book.

Eric Hydrick

Except Google news actually directs you to the article it found to actually read the whole thing. That article is attributed, and the service is designed to move users to the source. Google isn’t copying and pasting whole articles just snippets to give users a small preview. That falls under most definitions of fair use.

If you have a problem with people essentially copying and pasting whole articles into their own site without adding anything, then your problem is with those sites, not Google.

The newspapers are losing their revenues due to the advancements in the way content providers are conducting their business today. If Rupert Murdoch gave up on similar request he laid down to Google when received response in a manner: Ok, we will remove you from the search engine; I do not see what anyone in that business can do or any reason why should he. In a similar manner Google could ask from every newspaper to receive revenue from every visit they receive via Google search. Internet is built on cooperation via which all can benefit. It is a nonsense and more to it it is stupid. It is as if company is asking from a highway (or any road) builder to give to them part of their revenue because a person either via motor vehicle or any other mode of transportation or even pedestrian arrives to their store/office. Plain and old shakedown as if google has no their own infrastructure to pay for.

it good idea. google is become so rich and dictate rules to anybody. now time to show them how it looks like from another side. What about “protected”, “constitution”, “antimonopoly”, it only words. google do anything what they want (kill businesses, use our pictures & answers in search, etc) and you cannot do anything to change it.